Inspiration from Genius: 14 Motivational Lessons from Elon Musk

Elon Musk, or as I call him, “The Real Life Tony Stark“, has done more in his lifetime than I could hope to accomplish in 10. Any time I am looking for motivation, I find myself digging through these collections of inspirational quotes from the man that said, “When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world. Now I am.”Buy an “Intelligence is sexy” t-shirt!

1. “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

2. “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”

3. “Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?”

4. “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”

5. “You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.”

6. “It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”

7. “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”

8. “Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.”

9. “You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.”

10. “You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.”

11. “Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that… you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.”

12. “If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.”

13. “People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.”

14. “My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.”